From+Tree+to+Tray;+Healthy+Eating+in+Our+Schools

From Tree to Tray: Healthy Eating in our Schools By Charles P.

The National Farm-to-School Network is a network that tries to get children to have nutritious, delicious food at school, while supporting local farmers at the same time in all fifty states and the District of Columbia. They support local farm-fresh food in schools all across the United States by working in six areas: policy development, training and technical assistance, information development and dissemination, networking, media and marketing, and research and evaluation.

Farm to school started in the late 1990’s with a few programs, and now has more than 10,000 participating school districts spanning all across the United States. The National Farm to School Network was officially founded in 2007, with more than 30 organizations coming together from all across the nation. Originally co-led by member staff of the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) and the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute (UEPI) at Occidental College; it now provides assistance to programming in all 50 states, and ever-so expanding through a national and regional infrastructure and staff.

So now we know that the National Farm-to-School Network is in full swing, but how does Tolland participate? How do we get fresh foods into the Tolland Public Schools for everyone to enjoy? For this information, we sat down with Tolland Food Service Director Abby Kassman-Harned. She told us that Tolland is not the only school in the area. Through the School Nutrition Association, there are five local chapters. Tolland is part of the Yankee Chapter, one of the most active in the state. All Tolland Food Service employees are involved in chapter programs, as well as more universal School Nutrition Association programs. “Tolland is not different from other schools, but is part of a universal push to promote healthy eating in schools,” Kassman-Harned told us. That made me realize that we are all in this together.

I asked Ms. Kassman-Harned to tell us how local farms and vendors are involved in programs with us to promote the healthy eating she talked about earlier. “In our local area,” she told us, “Todd and Joyclyn Wright from Wright’s Orchard bring us their apples all the way from the beginning of the school year to mid-January.” She also told us that they will also provide peaches, plums, and even vegetables during different parts of the year. “We also participate in different commodity programs,” she went on to tell us. She explained to us that these programs will involve many local vendors that we are able to be notified of. This showed me that although Farm-to-School is probably the most famous initiative to promote healthy foods in schools, it is not the only one. Ms. Kassman-Harned went on to tell me that we have partnered with Big Y for the “Produce of the Week Campaign” at Birch Grove Primary School, which serves grades K-2. Students will receive brochures to take home with nutritional information about the produce, recipes, and more. She told me that students have tried different fruits and vegetables from the campaign that they wouldn’t have tried otherwise, like bock choy and brussels sprouts.

From my interview, and my prior research, I have learned about all the ways that healthy food has been intertwined into the community. School lunches have drastically changed over the last few decades, and I can certainly conclude that everything doesn’t just come out of a can anymore!